Pottsgrove taps Feola as new superintendent

LOWER POTTSGROVE — The Pottsgrove School Board announced its intention Friday to appoint Acting Superintendent Shellie Feola to the post permanently.

The vote is scheduled to occur at a special meeting Tuesday, 6:30 p.m., at the district office.

Feola, who has been the district’s assistant superintendent for more than five years, was appointed acting superintendent on Oct. 8 after her predecessor, Bradley Landis, left the district to take a post at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.

The board has decided to grant her a nearly five-year contract that ends June 30, 2017 which will carry a “pro-rated salary of $169,500,” retroactive to Oct. 8 when she assumed the post, according to a release issued Friday by the district.

Feola said Friday that there are no automatic increases in her salary package and any raise she gets in future years will be at the discretion of the school board.

“The board took time to think deeply about how best to move the district forward,” said Scott Fulmer, who was re-elected as the school board’s president at Tuesday night’s meeting.

“We debated whether to conduct an outside search,” Fulmer said in a prepared statement. “Ultimately we decided to stay with Ms. Feola since we already had so much confidence in her. She already knows the district so well. She also has a great depth of experience in personnel, curriculum, and dealing with the increasing challenges of No Child Left Behind and all the other federal requirements and high stakes testing.”

“I’m very excited for the opportunity to continue to lead the district to new levels of achievement,” Feola said in the same prepared release.

“We’ll maintain our focus on preparing all students for college and career readiness. More specifically, we are working diligently to ensure that our curriculum is aligned to the new common core state standards and that our instructional practices ensure we maintain a high level of rigor,” Feola said.

“We are also focusing on individualizing instruction in the classroom in order to meet the varied learning needs of all students,” she added.

Feola was hired in Pottsgrove in 2007 after serving as director of human resources in the Pennridge School District in Bucks County for three years.

From 1998 to 2004, Feola was the principal of the Willets Middle School in the Brunswick, Ohio, school district and from 1997 to 1998, was an assistant principal of the Dave Middle School in the Ohio school district of Kent.

She earned her bachelor’s in psychology from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and completed her masters in education leadership at Florida Atlantic University.

Her superintendent certification was earned at the University of Akron, where she also completed her doctoral coursework in educational administration.

In 1988 and 1989, Feola worked at Nova University Mental Health Center in Florida as a caseworker for chronically mentally ill adults and during 1996 and 1997, as an assistant dean of graduate studies at the University of Akron.

Here in Pennsylvania, Feloa’s volunteer work includes serving as the president of the board of directors of Camp Rainbow, outside Schwenksville, which provides several weeks of overnight camping each summer for disadvantaged children between the ages of 7 and 16.